Then they passed and each continued his separate way. A puzzled smile
parted Luke's thin lips.
Young Gates was a queer one. Smart enough, if book learning passed for
smartness; he had gone to town and got himself a schooling. Then, and
only he knew why, he had come back to the ancestral Gates holdings in
Dog Tooth Valley. What he, or for that matter anyone else, wanted there
was a mystery. There was some five hundred acres, all paid for and with
a clear title. But there was not enough plow land to provide even a
small family with enough vegetables for its own use. Here and there was
a small patch of scrub timber, and almost all the rest was swamp land.
When they'd needed that above all else, Dog Tooth Valley had provided a
safe haven for the once-numerous Gates men. They knew the only safe
paths across their endless swamps and, to this day, nobody else did. But
the feud was long since ended. Though it had been neither as prolonged
nor as bitter as the town liked to remember it and there had been a lot
more hand to hand slugging than there ever had been combat with deadly
weapons, the law had ended it and a new day had come to the hills. It
was a better day, too. Who but a fool would try to get what he wanted
with a gun when it was much easier and safer to think his way through to
it?
Turning to steal a covert glance behind him, Luke saw that Andy had
disappeared. The man whirled his horse to the side of the trail, lifted
the bag of kittens from his saddle horn and threw the still-tied sack
into a copse of brush.
2